


Disillusion and Prejudice

by RottenHarlot



Category: The Walking Dead (TV)
Genre: Daryl Has Issues, Dialogue Light, M/M, Merle Backstory heavy, Merle centric, Merle has heightened senses, Military mention, Protective Merle, Racist Merle, Slow Burn Daryl Dixon/Rick Grimes
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-06-23
Updated: 2015-06-23
Packaged: 2018-04-05 18:04:50
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,373
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4189710
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RottenHarlot/pseuds/RottenHarlot
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He was only a few days old, the pale skin of his face still tinged a slight red that made Merle’s toes curl in discomfort. Daryl’s cheeks were soft and rounded, feeling like the finest luxury in the world under his worn thumb. Ice blue eyes peered up at him. Merle felt like he was drowning. The baby’s delicate lashes fluttered like the wings of a butterfly, blearily attempting to erase sleep from his eyes. Then the baby opened his thin lips into a small circle, the small beauty mark next to his lips stretching along with the skin, and a small coo-ing noise strangled its way out of his new throat. Tiny fingers grabbed for the older boy, weakly opening and closing in a soft demand. For the first time in his life, Merle felt unconditional love for another human being.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Disillusion and Prejudice

**Author's Note:**

> This is my take on why Merle is the way he is. This story is going to start from his youth, touching upon major life events, then go through his time apart from Daryl during the apocalypse all the way up until his death. The next chapter will be posted in approximately a week and a half. (Also if you've read my other 'fic Soon We'll Be Found, I have not abandoned it and will finally have the next chapter posted by Friday at the latest.) This work is dialogue light so far. As more characters are introduced this will remedy itself. I've been toying with this idea for quite some time. Anyway, enough chit chat from me. Hopefully you enjoy!

           Merle Dixon for all his obstinate racism and Southern bluster, was nothing if observant. In school, he’d never been much for math or science but his comprehension and reasoning were a force to be reckoned with. Algebra left his brain feeling like mush but he could pin down, at the very least, the last hour of a person’s life to the last detail if you gave him a few meager minutes.

            He’d displayed his gift many times, hustling the older kids for money to buy food for the secret stash he kept under his bed, out of sight from Will Dixon. Once his teachers had caught wind of his prowess and witnessed it for themselves, they’d called his father in. They talked over him, throwing words like “special” and “possible autism” around. When they’d gotten home, Will had made sure to beat the special outta Merle ‘till he was blue and his mother was screaming for her husband to stop.

            From then on, Merle had kept his heightened senses, this thing that set him apart from everyone, to himself. Life was never easy for a Dixon, and Merle certainly was no exception. Life came at him a mile a minute, throwing bright colors and sharp edges his way. In his classes, he would choose to sit in the farthest possible spot from the board. When the teachers could actually afford to buy the colored markers for the white board, the intense color would hit him like a brick wall. He’d be lost in a swirling sea of blues, picking out each pigment with a careful eye until the bell rang. Merle found that the farther he sat away from it, the less distracting it was. Of course, that did nothing to stop him from noticing his classmates.

            Loretta, the only colored girl in the entire school, sat two rows in front of him and was _distracting._ Her skin was a beautiful caramel color that flooded Merle’s senses so completely he could taste it on his tongue. A sweet, slightly salty flavor that filled his mouth with a sticky feeling that coated his teeth. Every time he laid eyes on her, he was transported to the first Halloween his mother had managed to scrape some money together and buy him a caramel dipped apple for the occasion. Years later, after the once cherished memory is tarnished by ash, fists and his mother’s blackened body; it’s hard to look at dark skinned individuals without feeling cold hatred and anger. Words like “nigger” and “porch monkey” start to bubble out of his mouth, encouraged by his father and the biker druggies he started running with in high school. The bigoted words are heavy on his tongue, but feel delicious when he delivers blow after blow, watching all those people so different than him flinch away from his fury.

            The memory of Trent Pullman busting the left front tooth out of his mouth two desks over from Merle would be burnt into his mind forever. Simply because he could feel the tooth hitting the tile of the floor, delicately letting out a soft thud as it bounced off the cheap ceramic, all the way down to his toes. The red tones of the blood pouring from Trent’s mouth would paint his sleep for weeks after.

           He could see the bruises Mrs. Connolly tried to cover up with make-up clear as day from his spot in the back of the classroom. His mother could show her a matching set on her own face, all mangled purple in the shape of angry fingers. His own scars, thin and precise from his father’s belt, ached in sympathy. Whether that was from his heightened senses or from his experience with a broken home, he’d never know.

           When Merle had barely surpassed the hell of junior high, with all of the hormones and gangly limbs, into the pearly gates of high school, Daryl had been brought into the world. Will had taken one look at the boy in the delivery room and proclaimed that the boy wasn’t his and stalked off to his next bender, leaving his recovering wife to take care of the newborn and Merle.  He remembers when his mother had brought the baby home clearly.

           Their mother had handed Daryl off to Merle carefully, as if he were a porcelain doll. Her voice was soft but firm, lecturing him about holding his neck up and cradling him gently. The older Dixon didn’t see what all the fuss was about. Then he ducked his head down to look at his baby brother’s face.

           He was only a few days old, the pale skin of his face still tinged a slight red that made Merle’s toes curl in discomfort. Daryl’s cheeks were soft and rounded, feeling like the finest luxury in the world under his worn thumb. Ice blue eyes peered up at him. Merle felt like he was drowning. The baby’s delicate lashes fluttered like the wings of a butterfly, blearily attempting to erase sleep from his eyes. Then the baby opened his thin lips into a small circle, the small beauty mark next to his lips stretching along with the skin, and a small coo-ing noise strangled its way out of his new throat. Tiny fingers grabbed for the older boy, weakly opening and closing in a soft demand. For the first time in his life, Merle felt unconditional love for another human being.

           As Daryl grew into a young boy, their father grew more irate with his presence with each passing day. Merle would step between them and take whatever Will could dish out. Those days, it wasn’t much due to the alcohol constantly swimming in his system. Their mother was dead and in the ground, the colors they’d buried her charred remains in so dull and bitter. Daryl’s delicate features reminded Will of his wife. Merle could see that those large hands ached with the need to rob Daryl of his beauty, to mar that perfect skin so he wouldn’t see the unforgiving face of his wife each time he laid eyes on the boy.

           But the older Dixon boy had problems of his own. As he grew from a boy into a man, it seemed that his senses got stronger. Colors assaulted his mind so completely he could lose himself for days in the pastel hues. Daryl’s strong and rabbit quick heartbeat was so _loud_ , a constant thumping accompaniment to his life. He was a few days shy of graduating high school when he turned to drugs. Later in life, he would describe the way he saw things as tripping on an ecstasy laced form of LSD. He could taste sounds and colors, the edges of the world pricking his skin and making him bleed.

          Some kid on the football team, Leonard, started him off on the good stuff; heroin. With a giggle and a nasty scratch at his arm, he’d told Merle it would help dull whatever pain he needed to forget.

          The first time Merle shot up, pushing that black shit into his veins, felt _amazing_. The world slowed down to a molasses pace. The details of life didn’t assault his visage so completely. He could look at Daryl, still see him in all of his beauty, and not be overcome by it. For once, he felt at peace. Of course, the feeling of euphoria didn’t last long. What goes up must come down, and Merle crashed down hard.

         When the high left his body, it was nearly devastating. He’d been floating in a cloud of normalcy when it had suddenly vanished beneath him and he had smashed into the cold, unrelenting Earth. His bones felt smashed up, jagged pieces rising up to puncture his flesh. He wanted to peel the skin from his bones. Pull back the flimsy pink layer and peer inside to see the bleach white of his bones and delicate muscle of his body. His lungs felt twenty sizes too small for him, each breath rapid and staccato and so short of enough to feed his thirsty body.

         Merle hated the crash. But the need to shoot up again was even worse and all consuming. Every thought that managed to push itself around the race track he called a brain had one goal: get more heroin.

         He stole what money his father had in his wallet and went back to Leonard. This time, the kid gave him something to stave off the crash. Cocaine. Chasing the dragon with a little china powder made him feel like a normal person. Life was good. ‘Course that was ‘till the paranoia started. If Merle wasn’t careful with the dosage, the dragon would take him on a ride through hell. It had a way of making him think the most fucked up shit imaginable was happening in front of his eyes. He kept increasing the dose, trying to get high enough so that the illusion of normalcy would never leave. That all came to a stop after he pushed a particularly heavy load into his system.

         He came home to find Daryl sitting on their stained, tan couch sawing at his arm and peeling the skin back. Merle watched, horrified, as his younger brother drew the dull blade back and forth with one hand and ripped his flesh down with the other. All the while humming a disjointed little tune under his breath.

        Merle screamed and knocked the blade from his hands. He panicked and gathered his baby brother, with his lean frame and tiny limbs, in his arms and made a break for the front door.

        The floor was following him, its jagged teeth trying to steal his precious cargo and swallow him whole. He managed to get out of the house in one piece. He threw Daryl into the shitty pick-up truck their old man had given Merle and hauled ass to the hospital. Daryl protested the whole way, flinging his bloodied arm around.

        “ ‘M fine, Merle! Ain’t nothin’ wrong with me!” He’d hollered, pointing to the pink of his exposed muscles.

        Merle shuddered at the sight and pushed the gas pedal to the floor. When he’d made it to the hospital, he burst into the emergency room, yelling himself hoarse for a doctor. Two nurses were on him instantly, trying to pry Daryl from the older Dixon’s arms and assess the damage.

        They froze when they got to the wounded arm. The nurse that had grabbed Daryl slowly dropped the arm, her eyes going to her co-worker. Daryl looked ashamed, his face turned down to his boots with apologies stumbling out of his lips.

        Merle snapped at him for his ill found remorse. He then turned his fury on the hospital staff. He felt his face grow hot as he demanded they stop his brother from bleeding out all over the fucking floor.

       The nurse that had inspected his brother’s arm spoke up. She looked nervous.

      “Sir, there’s no wound to treat. Aside from a few scars, his skin is perfectly intact.” She said slowly, pointing towards the appendage.

       Merle opened his mouth, ready to stomp and shout and show off his Southern temper. When his eyes landed on Daryl’s arm, his mouth snapped shut so fast his jaw clicked. The wound was completely gone. There was no blood, no loose hanging skin, not even an incision.

       Merle muttered something unintelligible before grabbing Daryl and hauling ass outta there before the cops could show. The drive home was slow and silent. Daryl kept his gaze glued to the scenery outside, his fingers idly picking at a loose scab on the underside of his arm.

      After that, Merle was careful with the doses. He found the sweet spot between too much and not enough and didn’t fuck with it.

     The following years, Merle’s life was encapsulated in a blissful fog. He was too wrapped up in chasing highs and falling in with the wrong crowd to give two shits about anything besides himself. Things like a normal life and protecting his baby brother fell to the wayside. Hell more often than not, he couldn’t string together a conscious thought that wasn’t about his ego or his stash.

     Keeping a steady drug habit was expensive. Even with the money he managed to steal from his daddy and Daryl, he often found himself squeaking by with his dealers.

     That’s how Merle fell into dealing drugs himself. After his dealer overdosed on some laced heroin, he had motive and opportunity. _Someone_ had to move the product, why not him? It’s not like he had anything else to offer the world. Being a dealer was a pretty sweet gig; run the product, get the cash. Best of all, no one complained if he skimmed some off the top, so long as there was enough cash to cover it.

    Life was good ‘till his luck was up and it was time to pay his debt to karma; the heartless bitch.

    A deal went bad and a twenty something kid, ‘round Daryl’s age, wound up dead. Merle didn’t pull the trigger, but the courts considered the blood to be on his hands, smeared up to his elbows in red. He was offered a plea bargain. They gave him a choice; plead guilty and put in a few years with the army or swear his innocence and serve double the time behind bars. Merle was a hell of a lotta things, but he wasn’t stupid. He pled guilty and took his sentence with a smirk.

    Being in Iraq, fighting for a few piss poor ideals that he’d never believed in, felt good. Getting paid to take-out the people whose skin color assaulted his eyes in waves was like a religious experience. Merle had never been much for prayin’ but the army had made him quit drugs cold turkey. He found killing towelheads to be _very_ therapeutic.

    He stayed true to his word, something he’d never done before. He kept sober for a good, long year. Sobriety was hell, but the killing made it easier. Merle could focus his energy on becoming the best of something horrible. The spray of blood made a pretty picture on the desert sand, the colors mixing into a macabre rainbow that soothed him. Death was a dull color and he allowed himself to bathe in it. Most of the guys in his company avoided going out on missions with him as much as possible. He heard them whisper things about him behind his back. They called him “reckless” and “dangerous”. They thought of him as a disease, because he would burn everything he touched from the inside out. He was a lone wolf, hell-bent on destruction. He would blaze the war trail proudly, dance on the ashes of his enemies, and he didn’t much care who got hurt in the process; be they innocent civilians or friendlies.

    One day it wasn’t enough anymore. Colors and sounds came barreling at him at an exponential rate. Everything was so loud and so _bright_ – he just needed it to stop. Once his curse had come back in full swing, they were sent out on a patrol of the streets. A pair of Humvees made up their small caravan as they swept the streets of Shaykh Hamid.

    The sun was high in the sky. It was mid-day and the heat was oppressive. Merle felt something was off. He was in the Humvee pulling up the rear. The Southerner was in the passenger seat, eyes doing a swift check of the streets and what he could see of the lower levels of buildings. The bright rays of the sun were making his head pound. All of the sand and gravel were blurring together; his vision hazy at best. He felt it, deep in his gut that something was off. Something was wrong. Out of the corner of his eye he saw it. Just a brief glimpse of shy silver peeking out of the dull gravel. His brain stumbled into motion. He slapped a hand to his radio, his voice scratching over the airwaves a second too late. A half-second later, the Humvee bringing up point had passed over the IED in the road and exploded in a dark cloud. The flames towered up from the vehicle not soon after, a vivacious blend of reds and oranges.

    Immediately the soldiers accompanying Merle dove out of the vehicle. They ran for the rundown buildings on the left side of the street in an attempt to find cover.

    The Good Lord knew Merle had never been much of a hero. Too much responsibility and morals involved in that risky business for a redneck dealer from the backwoods of Georgia. But he could still hear a dull thump _pounding_ away in his head. He felt it from his cranium down to every cell in his body. Someone was alive and goddamn it all, Merle couldn’t just stand idly by with his dick in his hand knowing that.

    He ran for the vehicle. His comrades yelled for him to come back and he heard the bullets being discharged from both sides. One got so close to him, he could feel the displaced air whisper against his skin as it whizzed by. He couldn’t hear those sounds, that low heartbeat was resounding in the walls of his mind and kept pushing his feet forward.

   The Humvee had splintered in the midsection due to the placement of the blast, flames and dark smoke billowing out of the windshield. What was left of the glass towards the front of the vehicle was painted with soot, blocking out the mangled remains of Merle’s fallen brethren. He rounded the Humvee, coming to stop at the back hatch. He was able to wrench it open with a loud squeak. Ignoring it, he made a grab for the only body making that deafening noise; the only body still containing life. He pulled the other man to his chest, cradling him tightly as he’d done with Daryl so long ago, and ran for cover.

   The air was alive with the sounds of combat. The smell of gun powder and ash was thick in the air, working its way into Merle’s taste buds and making a home there. Once he was in the presence of friendlies, he was able to inspect the other man’s wounds. He wasn’t a damn medic, but he would field dress as best as he could. Two obvious wounds jumped out at Merle. There was a large puncture wound just above the hair line, blood running out of it profusely. He knew head wounds always bled like a bitch though, so he applied a gentle pressure to it, hoping to stop the bleeding. His eyes were then drawn to the large piece of shrapnel piercing through the lower midsection of his chest. If he remembered his rudimentary crash course on the body and its organs correctly, he would reckon that that piece of metal had embedded itself in the man’s lung. The man’s breath was labored and wet, stuttering out an occasional cough. This man was going to die. There was nothing he could do.

   Merle sat back on his haunches. A breathy sigh squeezed its way between his lips. The man, Wilson was the name printed on his fatigues, had his eyes squeezed shut in pain. Moisture eased itself out of the crumpled edges of his eyes. His hand shot up suddenly, weakly reaching out for the man who had saved him from being burned alive. Merle took the hand and clasped it in his own, feeling uncertain. It was cold and covered in sweat. He could hear that heart beat start to dim. The staccato rhythm that had invaded his mind was becoming sluggish and weak. Merle stayed with the man until his heart stopped. The slow trickle of life leaving Wilson’s body would haunt his dreams for years after.

   Not long after Wilson’s death, Merle fell back into shooting up and the army gave him the boot. Once he touched back down in Georgia, he set to stay sober long enough to track Daryl down to see if the kid was alright. He figured the Dixon homestead was as good a place to start as any.

   The house was just as shitty as he remembered. The shutters were a faded blue, rotten and barely clinging to the siding. The porch Merle had helped his drunkard father build years ago had holes in it and was beginning to cave in on itself. Yellowing grass brushed against his knees as he walked to the house. The yard was overgrown and decaying. All in all, it was home.

   Will Dixon, being the piece of shit that he is, had no idea where Daryl was. Merle wasn’t even sure the old man was coherent enough to realize who he was talking to; because the man would bet everything in his pocket that if he were sober, his daddy would be trying to beat him silly for running out on him. With a wave of a Jim Beam bottle, the liquid sloshing out and onto the carpet, Will claimed Daryl would be by later that day to drop off some money. Then his father stumbled back to the master bedroom to sleep off the remainder of his bender.

   Guilt clawed at Merle’s stomach. He’d run out on his baby brother, left him in the den with a blood-thirsty wolf, and his brother was still trying to take care of the crazy son of a bitch. He’d always known Daryl would be a better man than he could ever be.

   So Merle set up a post in the living room and waited. He didn’t bother going back to his old bedroom. There was nothing of value to him left there. He’d stashed his product at a friends before the cops had busted him and most of his cash was in a safe deposit box down at the bank under Daryl’s name. Somewhere the old man couldn’t get his dirty paws on it. Just sitting pretty and waiting for Merle to come back for it. He had a fleeting thought of leaving Daryl alone to scrape by; obviously the boy was doing just fine. He’d moved out without a kick in the ass from the law, unlike himself.

   He’d discovered that Daryl’s room had been stripped bare when he’d first started looking for the boy. Despite all of the remaining furniture and posters of the scantily clad women Merle had plastered over the walls, the room felt empty. All of the hard earned treasures his younger brother had collected over the years, like the mitt Merle had given him for his ninth birthday, were gone. The few pictures Daryl had managed to hide from their old man, of their mother and the brothers together, were also missing. His crossbow and hunting equipment were absent as well. To the untrained eye, the bedroom still looked occupied. The kid had left half of his clothes behind in the dresser and the bed was messy and unkempt, as if it’d recently been slept in. To Merle, it was as if the essence of Daryl had been stripped from the room. His warmth and unique spirit had taken flight and fled along with the boy himself. For once in his life, the shack he’d spent the majority of his life in didn’t feel like a home anymore. It was now just a mausoleum for memories that had long since burned out. Merle Dixon was not one for nostalgia. With a derisive snort, he rose from the moth bitten sofa, fully intending to leave.

   Merle’s company had been right about him. He destroyed everything he touched. Daryl was doomed from the moment their mother placed him into his arms. Between his brother and his father, the poor kid had never had a chance. And now here he was, trying to fuck the kid’s life up further after Daryl had gotten the one thing Merle had wanted most his entire life; freedom. And he had most likely fought tooth and nail to get it and keep it.

   The older Dixon couldn’t hurt his precious baby brother any further. He turned on his heel towards the door. And stopped cold.

   There was Daryl. He was standing rigidly half in the doorway, his mouth open and his face blanched white. He looked as if he’d just been told that Jesus Christ himself was alive and kickin’ and giving out high-fives down on Main Street.

   He wasn’t the kind of beautiful Merle remembered. His hair was stringy and limp, weighed down by the grease build up on the strands. His face was that same sun kissed tan that centered the elder Dixon brother, but his cheeks were gaunt. And the socket beneath his left eye was sunken in ever so slightly. His chin was decorated with dirty blonde stubble. Black smears of dirt and machine oil littered his body and clothes. And there, nestled close to those chapped lips was the small beauty mark that had first intrigued Merle all those years ago. His hands were halfway to his brother’s face before he caught himself. He ignored the visceral need to touch that skin and moved his hand back to his side.

   Daryl was still simply standing there, mouth slightly slack with shock.  

        “Well don’t keep standin’ there with ya thumb up ya ass, boy! Gittin here ‘fore ya let all them flies in. Give ole Merle a hug, baby brotha!” Merle chuckled.

   He held his wide, thick arms out for Daryl. His brother’s glacier like eyes narrowed into a glare. The man could feel the hatred from the gaze along his skin, burning him with shame. Daryl squinted up at him through the bangs hanging down in front of his eyes, long and hard. Then he shook his head and snorted.

        “Fuck off, ya fuckin’ lapdog.” He spat out, banging back out of the door way. The door rattled in protest at the rough treatment behind him. The air was cold and displaced from the younger Dixon’s anger. It was wrong to Merle and his body felt heavy and tight.

        “Fuck.”


End file.
